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[Wicked]

I set up my hens and ducks with laying boxes and forbidded eggs from my food piles. Result (eventually), lots of chicks and ducklings. So far so good. I unforbidded eggs thinking that was that, but I keep getting more chicks and ducklings. I can't butcher them fast enough, and I think they are now slowing down the game (is this feasible?), something is. I haven't counted them but there are by now a lot. Just the first hatching was more than enough
Is there a cure for this? What do I need do more than just unforbid eggs?

Am still a newbie, but have got further with this fort than with any other. My military just killed a weremoose without getting wounded, I have a hospital that seems fully equipped (but not staffed) (and WHY, by the way, do visiting human fighters like hanging out in it?) and have plumbed throughout with water without flooding anything I didn't want flooded. Yet.   I think I am getting hooked.

Thanks in advance

[Maximum Spin]

I set up my hens and ducks with laying boxes and forbidded eggs from my food piles. Result (eventually), lots of chicks and ducklings. So far so good. I unforbidded eggs thinking that was that, but I keep getting more chicks and ducklings. I can't butcher them fast enough, and I think they are now slowing down the game (is this feasible?), something is. I haven't counted them but there are by now a lot. Just the first hatching was more than enough
Is there a cure for this? What do I need do more than just unforbid eggs?

It seems probable that you now have too many eggs happening for your dwarves to keep up with them even if they are unforbidden. You may want to consider temporarily disabling or removing some nestboxes until the population is under control.

[PatrikLundell]

I've had what Maximum Spin describes happen to me in many fortresses: egg collection hasn't been of a sufficiently high priority for the dorfs to collect the eggs before they hatch (and I don't think collected eggs can hatch, but they have to remain in the nest boxes).
You should remove nest boxes until you're down to a reasonable number (I use 3 in my low pop fortresses) to reduce the number of eggs laid. You should also slaughter the ducks down to a reasonable number, and if you start with the females (obviously a few should be left) the number of clutches of eggs laid is naturally reduced to at most the egg laying cycle of those few.
Temporarily removing nest boxes blocks egg laying completely, but for live birthing animals you'd separate the males from the females, allowing only the few breeder females to have contact with males. I manage my animals by slaughtering the adults as they mature, leaving only immature ones (making sure there is at least one breedable member of each gender, possibly leaving an adult of the opposite gender if all the young are of the same gender). That slows down the meat mountain build up to a manageable level.

[Wicked]

 you'd separate the males from the females, allowing only the few breeder females to have contact with males.

thanks Partik. I thought I'd read somewhere that a female whatever only needed a relevant male to be on the map to breed. If you can control things by enforcing segregation, that makes it a lot easier.

[Maximum Spin]

thanks Partik. I thought I'd read somewhere that a female whatever only needed a relevant male to be on the map to breed. If you can control things by enforcing segregation, that makes it a lot easier.

This was the case in the past, but I understand that it has been changed.

[Starver]

Yes, 'spore' breeding was always fun (cages acted as prophylactic measures, though). Now there's gelding, but I'm not sure you can geld birds.

On the slaughtering, maybe you could even choose your avian Adam & Eves (or Noah family?) by looking for 'sport' plummages that you like, or good old size/fatness as a selection, see if you can breed them true starting from whatever random distribution you might have now. (Not necessary to solve your problem, but you're obviously in the position to experiment heavily. )


One way other, get your kitchens cooking and profit from bartering many many of the Prepared Meals to traders, perhaps?

[PatrikLundell]

No, birds don't stupidly have the relevant parts on the outside, so they can't be gelded. Spore breeding ceased to be a thing many years ago, before I started with DF.

[Starver]

I did stupidly miss out my intended suggestion that OP starts stuffing the excess chicks into cages, as I meant to describe further. For verisimilitude, single-sex segregated ones (though it should be inconsequential if you leave any cocks in the henhouse). The movement order might be higher priority than the egg-taking one, as described, and can even work alongside the butchery one to sustain both mechanisms at once.

I think they'll be ok in the cages, no matter how many. You can periodically assess those that are matured for the pot, the stud, or that other increasingly rather cramped cage you set up as a lever-controlled siege-distraction bomb of (possibly fur and) feathers by the entrance(s), or overhead security 'camera' cells set into the ceiling to be used as a sneak-telltale above various key corridorsy, or... or... So many other possible things you can do. But start with just the cages and then use your imagination when you can spare the dwarfpower.

[KevinM]

I tend to cage most of my birds and while in the cage, I put them somewhere public as a zoo so my dwarves who like that animal get a positive mood boost.
I do keep some in a room (of the same generation) and then build a nest box when I need a new generation.  As soon as they hatch, most of them will go into a new cage and I sell off the old cage/birds.

[Thunderforge]

On a related note, I brought one male and three female turkeys on an embark, then left them in a room with a few forbidden nest boxes and thought I’d sort them out once I’d got the Fortress sorted out properly.
Several years later I found that over population in a 7x7 room lead to several dead turkeys and ones with bits missing and blood everywhere. I guess poultry can have tantrum spirals too!

[PatrikLundell]

Animals get into fight if they're too cramped.